


Bleed

by tastewithouttalent



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Biting, Blood, Dominance, Extremely Dubious Consent, M/M, No Plot/Plotless, Psychological Trauma, Seizures, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-15
Updated: 2019-09-15
Packaged: 2020-10-14 14:56:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,031
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20602679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tastewithouttalent/pseuds/tastewithouttalent
Summary: "Perhaps there is nothing more with him now than than the spreading antlers of darkness climbing within his mind, the corruption of oil-slick blackness reaching out to claw and claim his splintering psyche." Will loses himself and is found by something else.





	Bleed

There is a shadow over him.

He doesn’t know where it comes from. It could be a physical presence, a barrier interposing itself between the clarity of his vision and the illumination of the sun; it could be a mental burden, a symptom of the weight that has tied itself to his feet to drag him down beneath the surface of an endless ocean and drown him in a thousand doubts and a million uncertainties. Perhaps it is not there at all; perhaps there is nothing more with him now than than the spreading antlers of darkness climbing within his mind, the corruption of oil-slick blackness reaching out to claw and claim his splintering psyche. He doesn’t know which it is, doesn’t know if he could tell the difference even if there was one at all. All he knows is it is real, more real than he is, so present it casts the shape of his own body and the familiarity of his own mind into ghostly fragments to be stripped to spidersilk and swept away on the wind of unavoidable existence.

“Will.” The voice is soft, familiar in a way that seems to chime a gong against the inside of his skull; that voice is the clapper to the bell of his mind, the source of a resonance he feels in his bones, that unmakes and reforms his existence into something abstract and new, something he sits within like an actor gazing out from behind an unfamiliar mask. He blinks, realizing only as his lashes dip that his eyes are open, that his lack of sight is from unfocus instead of darkness. There is light around him, dappled dim and pressing the weight of illumination against skin that he wears like an ill-fitting suit around the cage of his body and the burden of his muscles; and the light alters, flickering with movement, and his head turns to follow the action. It isn’t his own choice -- intention is gone from him, stripped raw from his existence to leave him as inert as the disconnected skeleton of his body -- but there is a hand against his cheek, elegant fingers pressing to fit to the shape of his skull and turn his head up into the light. His eyes skitter, jumping from one point to the next: the glare of light, the curtain of pale hair, the curve of soft lips; and dark eyes, obsidian in the shadow, gazing down at him.

There is no judgment in the gaze fixed on him. His eyes find the other’s for a moment, their disjoint attention briefly aligning; but he feels no connection, no sense of the shared humanity that he usually finds in even the worst of killers. There is nothing but void, there, deep and dark and endless; and it wanders down across him, fitting itself to the details of his expression with as much attention for the set of his jaw and the tendons in his neck as for what insight his wide-eyed gaze might offer. He can feel himself shaking, trembling with strength run unrestrained through his body to jolt the sparks of frayed electricity through his slack fingers and his sprawling limbs; but even then, there is no disgust in that implacable gaze, none of the innate revulsion that is so often found in too-immediate proof of the truth of the human existence as trapped within a physical cage. There is only attentive curiosity, consideration following the spasm of breath in his chest as much as the thud of his heels jolting against the floor, lingering focus drawing up the tendons cording in his neck and pulling in his wrists as the palm at his face draws down over his skin as if savoring the texture of it, as if mapping some artistic sculpture with the intent to render a perfect recreation.

Lips part and draw a breath as calm, as level as that endless stare. “You won’t remember this.” The words come first, followed by a drawing up of that gaze that prickles goosebump sensation all across his body in reply; as if he can feel fingers sliding over his skin, shaping his body to a desired form, laying claim to every muscle and tendon that flexes beneath their weight. His chest works, compressing on air to whimper a moan past the tight-set wall of his teeth; it sounds inhuman, the desperation of a wounded animal facing the spectre of death closing in on it. The shadow alters, shifting its form to something almost human, for a moment; dark eclipses his blurred gaze, a curtain of motion slides in his periphery. There’s another touch against his face; on the opposite side, now, and lower down, almost as if to brace his neck against the involuntary strain knotting his muscles. The hand against him is cool, the force firm with the absolute self-assurance of a doctor, or of an artist. “You’re going to be fine, Will.” A thumb slides over his chin to steady at the soft space beneath his jaw; he can feel the awareness of his own vulnerability as crystalline as pain at the back of his skull, in the rush of adrenaline that floods itself uselessly through his unresponsive body.

“This will pass.” Friction draws against his throat, pulling across his skin in a caress that fits the shape of a collar around his flexing neck. The contact lingers, spreading like oil under his skin even as the hand draws down farther to grip his shoulder, to pin his trembling body to the flat surface beneath him. “You should relax, if you can.”

He can’t answer from within the oppression of his physical form but the shadow doesn’t expect a reply. Perhaps it reads it from the touch it has at his face, at his shoulder, leaning in over him to swallow him up in the weight of its self-made darkness. Night-black eyes draw up, treading across the lines of his face, marking him as  _ known_, as  _ seen_, as  _ possessed _ down to the very marrow of his bones, and then the head over him dips forward and his vision disintegrates, clarity pushed aside by too-much closeness. There is the shift of a form over him -- a darkness, a body, a nightmare -- and then, against the curve of his cheek: a whisper of contact, dry and cold as snakeskin brushing over him. He shudders at the friction, unable even to place it until there is a spill of heat, of warm air trickling over his skin and digging in against the strands of his hair, and he realizes it’s the touch of lips ghosting across him.

There is more, more almost at once. Lips pull away by a breath, retreat for a draw of air, and then return, with greater force, this time, to print their mark at the soft space at his brow, at the delicate space of his temple where a harder blow might steal his crackling consciousness free of his grasp. In the center of his forehead, with his head braced steady by the palm at his cheek; in front of his ear, pinning a loose curl of hair flush to his skin beneath the kiss urging against him. He struggles for air as the lips work against him, finding a path over the line of his jaw and down to the strain of too-tight muscle in his neck to print a lingering friction that seems to spread out into his veins to tangle itself around his blood like ink spilling into a glass of clear water. His head turns in against the touch at his face, urged closer by the force of the lips kissing his cheek, jaw, throat, the contact still steady but coming faster, now, hurried on towards frenzy as it goes on.

The hand at his shoulder is too tight. He can feel the force of the thumb at his shoulderblade bruising hard with the weight of its grip, and he is shivering, cold as if the mouth against his skin is stealing his body heat with every touch of those dry lips rasping against his skin. His sweat has gone clammy, cool and sticky at his hairline and against the insides of his slack wrists; his trembling is weakening, his body running dry of the strength it has spent so hastily as to make it all but useless. By the time the mouth chilling his skin crosses the boundary of his neck and down to the line of his shoulder his shaking is all but gone, faded nearly past sensing even to his own dizzy thoughts. He feels drained, his body aching and his mind delirious with exhaustion, until he goes slack to the press of lips against his skin, almost grateful for the spreading chill the contact lances into him. His jaw loosens, his lungs flex on a full, deliberate breath as an open-mouthed kiss urges to his shoulder, right against the line of muscle that runs over the top. Then the hand at his shoulder tightens, fingers dip in close against him, and cool explodes into a burst of blood-red heat as teeth dig in to tear sudden, startling pain into the smooth of his skin.

His breath erupts out of him, tearing into a shout of shock and hurt that drags itself raw across his vocal chords. His spine arches, his body tensing on reflex instead of intent, but with his strength shattered and that bruising grip forcing him down he can gain no traction at all. His shoulder flares with pain, hot and vicious as it hazes his vision, and his veins illuminate with fire to scorch through the shadows and burn his thoughts to red. He shudders against the floor, all his fever-delirium swept aside by the bright, crystalline immediacy of pain; it’s only as the shock gives way that the teeth in his skin loosen their hold to draw free. His shoulder is left throbbing, pain smoldering as blood trickles to outline the matched crescents torn into his skin, and when the form rises to lean over him once more the hand at his cheek pushes to tilt his face up. He surrenders, turning his head to let the pained tears at his eyes speak the question he can’t find the breath to speak.

There are no answers in the face gazing down at him. It bears a familiar seeming, something that might seem almost human, if you weren’t paying attention to the vast, seeping darkness behind the eyes, if you didn’t notice the blood-red staining the soft mouth to scarlet. Those eyes slide over his face, drawing through a caress as affectionate as the palm bracing at his cheek, and then they steady in on his eyes, locking onto the confusion in his mind. He stares up at them, into them, facing down the cold of endless dark; and feels it slide into him in answer, sinking into the pool of his mind to eclipse the bright of his vision within itself. He gasps a breath that tastes like night, that fills his lungs like the drowning weight of water, and the shadow over him comes forward to slide its lips to claim the give of his own.

He can feel the stick of blood against them, can taste the dark bite of iron at the back of his tongue, and then there’s pressure against his mouth and his lips are parting, rendering up surrender before he can think of it. Darkness fills his mouth, metallic and liquid and heavy-hot, and his lashes flutter, his vision yielding in the face of an impossible certainty. The palm at his cheek slides back, fingers curling to hold in his hair, and his hands lift from the floor at his sides to touch pale locks heavy and soft like silk against his palms. His fingertips slide back, his thumb skims something hard and smooth like bone, like an antler branching out beneath his touch; but his mouth is full of darkness, his blood is thrumming heat, and when the hand at the back of his neck arches him up towards greater surrender, he succumbs without resistance.


End file.
